Life Goes On
by MissFortuneSirPrize
Summary: Life, unfortunately, does go on for the rest of them. Sure, they weren't sure how they were supposed to get past the last, fateful accident, but eventually they do.
1. Abel

He grows up without his parents. No offence to Wendy, she's great and looks after him, gives him anything he could ever want, but he doesn't count her as a mother even though he knows that she is, at least biologically. When he thinks about his mother, he remembers smiles that came mixed with tears, a kind of hazy recollection of brown hair and the smell of flowery perfume, the way that she used to hold him and Thomas tight and kiss them on the top of the head. Thomas, he doesn't remember, but Abel does.

He lives with the knowledge that his family were killers, that his grandmother killed his mother, that she had a hand in the absence of a grandfather he had never known, that his father had chosen death over raising him. Sometimes, lying awake at night looking up at the ceiling, he wonders if it's because he couldn't stand to look at them and see his mother and know she wouldn't be coming back. He sees the sadness in Wendy's eyes as he says or does something that must remind her of people that are mere ghosts in her memories now, and pretends that those small flickers of emotion don't cut him right down to the core. He's glad that Thomas doesn't remember, or at least he doesn't seem to, that his little brother can grow up without the weight of a thousand bad decisions pressing down on his shoulders, that he can look in the mirror and feel content with what he sees, instead of the crushing sadness and anger that Abel feels when he sees his father's eyes looking back at him, the same ones he sees in his dreams. His father got his wish, and Abel does grow up hating him, but not in the way he was probably supposed to. Being a criminal, all the illegal shit, he doesn't care about any of that because he knew that it wasn't all his father was. It couldn't be, not with all the love that he remembers feeling whenever his father had been around. What does make him angry is the absence, the void that's left behind where his parents should be, and he hates his father for not protecting them all, for sending him away and choosing not to follow, for forfeiting the chance to be there as they both grew up. Most of all, though, he hates himself, hates the way he looks and the way that Wendy can't look at him without seeing the ghost of someone he thinks of as equally a good man and a coward.

He moves away, when he's just finished school, but he can never seem to escape the shadow that hangs over him no matter how far he goes and he never goes back, not even when he gets the call for Thomas' graduation, or the invitation to his wedding that eventually finds him when he settles down somewhere in Iowa for a few months. He remembers to call just enough to let them know he's alive, but eventually even those fade off until the only people he talks to are the waitresses in the roadside diners and whoever he's doing off-the-books work for that month. His hands grow rough and scarred, his skin becomes more tanned over time, and his hair lightens practically white underneath the relentless sun of Arizona, Nevada, Texas. His eyes stay the same. He sees Thomas' name in a newspaper one year, too many since he dropped contact and never bothered to pick up a phone again, in an article about promising young entrepreneurs and feels a familiar stab of pride that his little brother is making something of himself.

The world doesn't change or stop, doesn't even notice, when his heart stops beating one night in a dirty motel room with an empty bottle of liquor resting on the bed next to him. There are no people to mourn him, no one to cry at his funeral or tell stories about his life now that he's gone. It's only him and the bottle in that room, at least twenty years since he said goodbye to Wendy and disappeared. Just him and the drink and his demons, but it doesn't matter to him, if it ever had. There never was anything left for him to fight for, not when he knew his baby brother would be looked after, and he's so tired of trying.


	2. Thomas

He doesn't remember his parents, but he has enough pictures given to him and stories told that he doesn't feel too bad about it, all things considered. He has Wendy and Abel to look after him, so it hurts less and less as time goes by, until he's old enough to understand things and Wendy tells him the full story of their father, and then all he feels is crushing disappointment and anger. Disappointment, because he had though that his parents were good people, and anger because he sees what that knowledge does to his brother. He doesn't say anything, he's not sure what there is to say, but he tries to help however he can.

He's twelve years old when he realises that while Wendy is good people and cares about them, she only makes things worse inside Abel's head. Abel remembers more than he does, has memories about what their parents were actually like, and he knows that his older brother looks like a carbon copy of their father while he starts to look more and more like their mother. It crushes him when he comes home from school one day to Wendy at the kitchen table, where she tells him that Abel is gone and didn't stick around to say goodbye.

The weekly phone calls become his lifeline, all that's left of the older brother that he still admires. They always start with Abel's rough voice calling him nerd, affectionately the way he always had, and he cries for hours into Wendy's shoulder when the calls slowly stop and never start again. He tries to track his brother down, in between college classes and midterms and commitments, but if Abel doesn't want to be found, he won't be. His eyes scan the audience at his graduation and something breaks inside his chest when Abel isn't there. When he gets married, the space at his side is conspicuously empty, even though he could've chosen anyone, because if it couldn't be Abel there wasn't a point.

He goes through life like something is missing, the air a little harder to breathe and things seeming duller than he knows they are. He never stops hoping to look up and see familiar blue eyes looking back at him, even as he ages and watches his own children grow, even as his company takes off, but he never does. It's almost as if Abel had never existed, like he had grown up with a ghost, but he remembers. When his daughter announces that she's pregnant and that she's naming the baby Abel he chokes up, squeezing his eyes shut around the tears. When the boy is born, he has the same unnaturally blue eyes, and he somehow knows that his brother isn't on the earth anymore.

He mourns in his own way, quietly, late at night when his wife is sleeping and the house is quiet. His life is long, content, happy. He lives to see his great-granddaughter being born, to see his children grow up and get married and start lives of their own. He outlives his wife and rejects his children's pleas that he accept help now that he's alone because he can take care of himself, but if he's truthful, it does scare him. It started to scare him almost a decade before, when he opened his eyes one morning to Abel sitting on the dresser kicking his legs obnoxiously. "Man, you got old, Tommy." The laugh is the same as he remembers, but when he opens his eyes again, Abel is gone.

He dies peacefully, somewhere in his 90s, surrounded by his family even if he doesn't remember who they are anymore, doesn't recognize their faces. It's different than how he expected it. His vision just starts to go dark at the edges and he knows that this is it. In his last few seconds, the last thing he heard was a voice laughing in his ear, "It's about time, nerd."


	3. Juice

He knows heartbreak, knows it like the back of his own hands, but it never gets any easier the more that he feels it. It's never been an easy time with his family, so no one is surprised when he gets out as soon as he can without looking back. Sure, he appreciates them for being there in their own shitty way, but he doesn't feel like they're family, or at least they don't fit how he thought a family was supposed to be. School was a hard time, dressed in a bunch of worn out and ripped clothes from the charity shop, constantly feeling like he doesn't have a place in the world among these people. Their lives are regular, full of problems like what to wear on dates and who was hooking up with who, not whether or not they were going to have food to eat that day or if they were going to have to give up their bed because their mother was passed out drunk again.

He searches for a long time for the kind of family where hell belong, where he won't have to worry about any of that stuff, and he finds it in a small town and a bunch of men who shouldn't fit together but do somehow. Somewhere along the way, probably between learning how to ride and making his way through the country sleeping wherever he can manage, he learns how to use a computer to make his life a little easier, a way to get a little extra money because people are stupid and they're always going to need help with their own computers. He uses that as his in, stating with more confidence than he feels that if they want to move up from the small-fish stuff they're going to need him, and against all odds it works. Until it doesn't. It all seems unimportant, in the end, but the fact is that he tried. This is the first thing he can remember in a long time that's been good for him, the first time in probably forever that he feels like he has his own place in the world, and he tries to keep it but it slips between his fingers like sand in an hourglass no matter how hard he tries to fix the mistakes he's made. He remembers moments when his mother was lucid, alert enough to know that he was there and the way that she would laugh low in her throat and tell him that he wasn't going to be anything special, that in the end he was going to be alone. He tries hard, so hard, to prove her wrong even though she's not around anymore to see that he's worth something, that he's not nothing, but it seems as if the more he tries to change it the more he just messes it all up.

The scars around his neck, faint unless you knew what you were looking for, seemed to pull him down like weights sewn underneath his skin, and he thinks about doing it as he pulls the razor down from his face and presses it into the thin skin of his wrist but he's never been good with the sight of blood, and ends up dropping it into the sink with a sob that catches in his throat and tears that burn at his eyes. He should've ran, should've tried to prolong it as long as he could, but if he leaves he'll be alone and a life looking constantly over your shoulder isn't living. When everything is said and done, when his mistakes come into light and the family that he's always wanted has chosen his death, all he hears is the rasp of his mother's voice in his ears, telling him that she was right.

The pie tastes like ashes in his mouth as he chews and looks into the eyes of the man sitting across from him, sticking to his tongue with a thick smoky taste and almost choking him as he swallows, and his mind is quiet as he stands up slowly. It doesn't really hurt, when the sharp edge of the scalpel slides into his skin and tears through muscle. He registers it mostly as pressure, at least until the blood begins to spill down over his skin and it feels like someone has gotten their hands around his lungs and squeezed. He has a lot of regrets in life, so many days spent wishing that he was someone else, hours spent with the metal of a gun pressed into his chin as his hands shake, but none of it matters in the end. The only thing that matters is that it's going to be over, and he thinks that he doesn't particularly mind that it's going to be like this. He was never going to have a normal life anyway, there was never any chance of him settling down and having a family of his own, he wasn't the white picket fence and three kids type. He had never been in love, so he wasn't going to leave anyone behind who needed him. There was no one waiting for him, no one who would care that he would be found upon a dirty floor with his clothes stained with blood. There would be no tears shed over him, no stories in the paper, no hands clasped to mouths as they heard the news. All the people he loved, everyone who he considered family, not one of them would give it more than a passing thought. He would simply be just another person to dispose of after their usefulness had run out.

He dies just as his mother said, alone and unimportant but it was okay, because at least for a little while, he had finally gotten to know what it felt like to have people care about him, and that was enough. He dies with blood flowing down the front of his shirt and his chest pressed to the floor, choking on the blood that filled his lungs and trickled from the corner of his mouth with every harsh exhale, but it didn't matter, because he didn't have to try anymore.


	4. Tig

"Wake up," a voice whispers through the darkness, and he opens his eyes. There's nothing to see, there never is, but he can feel the bed dip behind him as if a body is shifting around. "You're not real," he says to the darkness that seems to push down on him, crushing him like a heavy blanket. "I'm as real as you need me to be," it says, and he shivers, curling up tighter into a ball.

"Then leave me alone, please. I don't need you."

"Doesn't seem like it," it says, and he can hear footsteps moving around the room, "It seems like you need me more than you'll admit to yourself. After all, aren't I still haunting you?"

"Why can't you just go back to where you came from?" He closes his eyes, determined to pretend that nothing is happening, but opens them almost immediately. The second he closes his eyes, he's back on his bike, terror and panic rising in his chest as he follows the red and blue flashing lights. "Where did you come from?"

The room is silent for so long that he starts to drift off to sleep, sure that whatever it was is gone, but then the bed shifts again and he tenses when a weight settles against his back. "In here," it says, and a finger taps him on the side of the head, softly, "I'm not real. You just won't let go."

"I don't think I can."

Invisible fingers wrap around his arm in a grip that's so tight it's almost bruising, familiar, and he doesn't move as the body behind him curls into him, keeping him between it and the wall. "Then don't. What's the problem?"

"It's not right. It's not normal."

"Newsflash, Tiggy," the voice says, laughing in his ear, "You were never normal."


	5. Chibs

It's been two months, seven days, five hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds since he's had to adjust to being alone. Two months, six days, four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds since he was woken up by knocking on his door, head still pounding from a headache, and the police told him that Jax hadn't made it. He almost doesn't want to go to the funeral because that makes it official, makes it real, but he does it anyway even though watching the coffin get lowered into the ground feels like the end of something. He's not sure what, apart from the obvious, but whatever it is doesn't seem like it's good. It's been two months and eight days since he let himself into an empty house to go through what's left inside, which maybe shouldn't be done right then, but he has to distract himself somehow, and this feels like the kind of closure people like them never get. He keeps the laptop and the stacks of books, the notebooks and the small photo albums he finds hidden behind the kitchen cabinet, because they're reminders. Sometimes, when he's really drunk, which happens a lot, he can see him. It's never solid, more like an picture playing over an old movie projector, flickering, transparent, but it's still him. He'll see him stretched out on the couch, on the bed bed, or coming through the door, or lounging out on the fire escape with a cigarette. Every now and then, they'll even talk. Usually he'll just tell him that he's an asshole, throws all the old affectionate insults at him, typical stuff. When that happens, he's never sure if the noise he ends up making is laughter or something else, but he's very sure of the noise he makes on the rare occasions when he looks straight at him and says, "Love you, brother." He goes into church for the first time in years. He has to admit, he's not sure why. He's not sure he can believe in a Lord that would let all this shit happen. It doesn't really matter, because when he goes, he doesn't pray to any God. He prays to Jax, asks for him to give him the strength to get through another day. He tells him how much he misses him, how much he loves him. Apologizes for letting him die, begs him to come back. He spends a lot of time thinking about the grave with his body in it, and of who put him there, what put him there. When he finally finds the man, there's no debate, no vote, and it's been three years, eight months, twenty one days, fifty-two minutes and nineteen seconds since they lost him. It's in the man's own home and there are footsteps coming down the hall, he can hear them but he doesn't care. He just shoves the barrel of his gun against the bastard's temple, hands steadier than they've been in months, and pulls the trigger. A second later there are more shots, strangely muted as he turns to meet them, and there's a pain in his chest as he falls. The room starts to spin, he can't seem to get enough air into his lungs and he's cold all of a sudden, but he can't bring himself to mind. All the anger and hate and misery that have been building in his heart for so long have suddenly been replaced by a tense calm. The room's starting to go dark at the edges, but at the same time he swears he can see a light coming from somewhere above him. He feels like he's floating, drifting towards something and just before his eyes close, he hears a beloved, familiar voice murmuring, "Come home, I've been waiting for you." He's been refusing to say goodbye up until now, and now he doesn't have to.


End file.
